Tag: denmark

Bicycles do have negative environmental impacts, particularly those associated with their production and disposal. They are not quiet either and one can even buy compressed air horns blasting no less than 120 decibels if being louder than loud is the logic behind bike commuting. But I do believe a bicycle still qualifies better than a car to that trendy-greeny tagline – “it is non-polluting and quiet”. Whatever the car.

I’m sure bike commuters who were struggling to keep rolling in wind and rain this morning in Stockholm would be pleased to know that while bicycle infrastructure and the whole cycling as an alternative mode of transportation idea need massive improvements and support the so called “environmental campaigners” were busy helping the car – non-polluting and quiet – industry breaking Guinness World Records on the Öresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark yesterday.

We need to get people to pay attention to the electric car because it is non-polluting and quiet. Before summer there were just 400 registered electric cars […] That is way too few. – Jakob Hougaard, deputy chairman of the City of Copenhagen’s technical and environment committee.

Since when did the electric car become a non-polluting vehicle? Don’t you need to manufacture it anymore? Build and replace the batteries every now and then? Charge it? Does the electric engine make the sound of rolling (studded or not) tires disappear all of a sudden?

Although they are still awaiting an official count for their effort to create the world’s longest electric car parade, the event organisers say that they easily secured the Guinness World Record for the ‘most electric cars on a roof top parking lot’, the ‘largest spiral made with electric cars’ and the ‘most electric cars on a bridge between two countries’.

Guinness World Record for the ‘most electric cars on a roof top parking lot’, the ‘largest spiral made with electric cars’ and the ‘most electric cars on a bridge between two countries’? ‘F’ word me, that was definitely worth campaigning for! I’ll try to think about that next time I’m riding – non-polluting and quiet – on a tiny bicycle path squeezed between two lanes of speeding motorized traffic. It will definitely cheer me up.

Let’s be clear: many people won’t agree with me but I simply don’t see a valid reason why a healthy person (and by that I mean anyone with two legs and a pumping heart) would ride an electric bicycle (or any other electric-assisted machine for that matter).

I just don’t buy made up excuses that usually come in a discussion about electric bikes and often include “sweat” or “green”. What’s the point in riding a bicycle if you are not cool with the fact that you might sweat? What’s the point in riding a bicycle because it’s green but do it with the help of a motor and a not so environment friendly battery attached to the rack? Yes. You get the point. There’s absolutely no reason you should be riding an electric bike when you could ride a regular bike. So just get a mopped already.

On the other hand some people can’t ride bicycles without assistance (for real) and they were, until now, left with pretty much only ugly solutions: take a bike, add a battery and a special hub. Done. The tank is ready to drive.

There were lots of e-bikes at Sweden Bike Expo this year and one manufacturer (Pro-Movec) really got my attention as they were the only one offering electric bicycles that actually did look great ! Here is one of their city models: Breeze.

And that’s how you make a battery almost disappear. Simple and elegant.

Nice to see some effort being put into making electric bicycles look nicer. Hope next year will bring its share of innovative ideas so the electric bicycle as we know it today is history. What do you think? Does the Breeze look nice to you? Does it look better than e-bikes you’ve seen so far?